Madeleine McCann allegedly abducted in Portugal (2) The press apologise.

[missmode]

Well whatever the papers may or may not be saying, people that I speak to up and down the country aren't accusing the McCanns of anything. (Apart from the leaving the kids alone thing, but that's been done to death).

 

Newpapers columns are just that one reporter's opinion. My opinion and experience is different.

In fact I don't know anyone who has changed their opinion of the McCanns.

They felt for their plight in the begining and they still feel for them now, and don't believe them to be guilty of Madeleine's disappearance or 'death'.

 

And as regards the petition thing, there are just as many signing petitions to have the McCanns left alone.

 

It just shows how differently people view this story as everyone I know thinks they have something to do with it. The majority thought they did from the outset the others have been swayed over the recent weeks.

[newboyintown]

I really don't know what to believe about this anymore, The papers are saying so much stuff about the parents being involved. I have always had a small feeling that they may have been involved but im clueless really now all this has happened.

[Kingmaker2]

bagger, sadly I think it's the majority of people who believe what the papers say .. and the minority who make their own minds up and take what is written with a ROCK of salt ..

 

KSFF that's exactly what I'm trying to say, only bagger obviously doesn't see it that way.

 

Bagger,

Madeleine Mccann didn't become a big story because it was deemed a highly newsworthy event in the big scheme of things. Yes it's a sad story, but before the disappearance no one in the general public at large, knew of Madeleine's existence, let alone cared for her welfare.

If the media actually reported the disappearance according to its true newsworthy importance, rather than its potential viewership/circulation value then perhaps the disappearance would have merited a quick mention in the middle of the evening news bulletin. If the newspapers also followed suit, then the story may have featured a few lines in the middle of the paper. The public may have still read and seen about it, but because the story didn't feature as a big news story, the public at large would not have taken to the story in such a big way.

Let's face it had Madeleine dissappeared during 9/11 or 7/7 or the boxing day Tsunami we probably would not have even heard of Madeliene or her disappearance.

So yes, the media do have great influence on how people react to stories, and I'm afraid it's the minority of the public that

don't get manipulated. Why do you think that politicians want to win over the media moghuls if they don't believe that the majority of the public can and reguarly does get manipulated by the media, Madeleine's story is just another prime example of this in action

[poppins]

Last bit of newsI heard in the US this morning was that the Portuguese police have never ever had any solid evidence against anyone whatsoever in this case.

 

But the story's still front page on magazines again this month, had a months worth of Lady Di now this sad story all over again.

[back2basics]

Kingmaker i think you are hitting the nail on the head.

 

There is actually a psycological basis for what you are describing.

 

Many studies have been completed that all show that when you show people a picture of a child and tell them a sad story and ask them how much money they would give, then they are shown two or more kids with te same story, people always give less money. So people are hard wired to feel more empathy for a single child. Hence people getting so involved in this and really paying less attention to the tens of thousands of dead Iraqi children, or the kids who are homeless.

 

So you know real news, like Dafur, Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of suffering or killed children there overwhelm people, and they care less.

 

Add in the sensational aspect, and the money the media are making from this and you have lots of face time for this child in the media. It's almost like Dianas death, people who don't know this child or the parents are talking as if they do know them. When they have only seen them on TV. And when you have people watching 4 hours of TV a day, in some ways they do know the pixels on TV more than they do friends. Even though they don't really know these people, they know their personas. There is also an emotional attachment to the feeling people felt in the first few months. People were so certain the parents were not to blame, they gave money. Now its hard to back away from that, because people feel they could not be wrong in those early days.

 

But the media created much of this situation. Hundreds of children go missing like this every year, most of the time it is parents or family members who are involved. Most of the time they do not get wall to wall coverage, so people do not feel the same attachment. If thsi girl wasn't so pretty, she wouldn't have been in so many paper. If she was from a coucil house estate, again i am not sure we would have seen her in the news as much. But the parents are also to blame, because they have been paying PR consultants to keep this in the news. And they just got a new top PR guy to spin things in their best interest. What ever that may be.

 

Its complex, but the media need to be more ethical and less sensational. They need to retake their role as watchdogs and not news creators.

[Saffy]

back2basics .. not a cat in hell's chance of the media being ethical.

[shoeshine]

Janice Turner wrote a piece in the Comment Section of the Times Online today. It's worth reading.

 

How quickly a crowd’s cheers turn to boos. Found guilty then, without a trial, even though in order to conceal, then move, then move again a by-then suppurating corpse, leaving barely a trace, while tracked by the world’s media, the McCanns would surely need to be both poker-faced psychos and possessed of magical powers.

 

So why do newspaper mailbags and a legion of internet forums brim with bile? Why have 17,000 people signed an online petition calling for social services to remove the McCann twins? Why this sudden outburst of dark jokes in Private Eye and internet quips about how many children can be carried in a new vehicle called the “Renault McCann”? Is it really fury at what Kate and Gerry McCann might have done? Or is it that the possibility of their guilt has given many permission to vent, at last, emotions they have bottled up all summer long?

 

Janice Turner Article..TimesOnline today..full article

[*Cinderella*]

That's not new to this case. The guy they arrested in Suffolk for five murders was hung, drawn and quartered in many sections of the media and general public, even before they arrested and charged a different guy 24 hours later and let the original guy walk free.

 

I wonder if he's managed to have any sort of a life since.

 

He committed suicide

[cgksheff]

Janice Turner wrote a piece in the Comment Section of the Times Online today. It's worth reading.

 

Cough. Cough.

 

 

.This from the Times today; a bizarre headline, but the column is pretty accurate about how public reactions can so rapidly do a complete about-turn.

[shoeshine]

Cough. Cough.

 

I posted a specifically identified link title, cgksheff....